


Catch the Drift

by LadyJanelly



Series: Today's Tom Sawyer [4]
Category: Dark Angel, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:01:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/LadyJanelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can't stay at Bobby's forever...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch the Drift

========2010 (Spring)

Sam and Ben get ready to leave Bobby’s place in the spring--not for good, but there are things the little household needs that they can’t make and Sam figures he and Ben are best suited to whatever surprises the outside world might throw at them. Ben’s restless with staying in one place and not hunting and it doesn’t look like he’ll ever be comfortable living with Amber and her daughter in such close quarters. A little space will be good for everyone.

Dad’s old Sierra is still there and still running, but Sam’ll be damned if he’s going to sleep sitting up in the front seat or camp on the cold ground if he can help it. He goes alone, to the third shed from the house. He doesn’t tell anybody what he’s planning. Alone with his memories, he pulls the canvas tarp off of the Impala, Dean’s first love and the place he died. Four years have passed and the loss still hits Sam afresh, twisting in his chest and bringing him to his knees. 

Stupid car. Stupid brother. Why does it have to hurt so damn much? 

Then Ben’s there, patting Sam’s shoulder. It’s a pretty lame attempt at comfort, but the fact that Ben would even try makes the hurt recede a little.

2010 (Autumn) 

For the first time in Sam’s life, hunting is actually a paying job. With the chaos in the mundane world, evil and wildness has taken over the fringes. Werewolves spread through Wyoming in that first black, cold winter. Thousands in the northwest died--starved, murdered, frozen, leaving angry spirits in just about every town. They fight three young Wendigo in one year.

They never ask for payment that the people they help can’t afford. Sometimes it’s as little as a place to sleep for a night. Sometimes it’s trade goods, watches, rings, maybe cash. Certain small car parts are worth more than a car without them. 

Sam and Ben make it back to Bobby’s once every few months, dropping off what’s needed there. Not that Bobby needs much--he’s turned his junkyard into a thriving business of repairing pulse-burned cars and they’re doing alright.

Sam doesn’t feel any guilt when he decides that maybe he’ll take Ben down south for the winter, maybe Mexico.

2011

They’re on a parts run for Bobby when a gas station owner in Nevada offers Sam a full tank of gas and five hundred dollars for Ben.

“Not for sale,” Sam tells the man, and he does the thing with his eyes that’s kept them out of trouble before in the post-pulse world. He lets the ice show, lets the guy see how little Sam values a stranger’s life when compared to Ben’s safety.

“What about just the gas and you can pick him up in the morning?” The freak’s eyes never leave Ben, watching hungrily as the boy fuels up the Impala. 

“Not for rent either,” Sam says, stepping into the man’s line of vision.

“Yeah? What if I just take him?” The sick bastard says, reaching for the handgun at his back. And really, if he was going to pull a gun he should have done that before making the threat.

Sam shoots him twice, not immediately fatal wounds, but with the scarcity of antibiotics and how hard it is to find a doctor, he can’t pretend he didn’t just kill a man so Ben wouldn’t have to.

Thirty miles down the road, Ben speaks up. “I don’t understand, Sam. What did he want?”

That’s how the “So there’s this thing called sex” conversation starts. Sam tries to think of any point where Ben could have been exposed to the concept of healthy human relations and can’t think of one. That time when the Council of Elders of a commune in Oregon tried to pay him for dispersing a poltergeist with a night among their “most fertile” daughters sure as hell doesn’t count.

He pulls the car off down a side road and finds a quiet place to have “the talk.”

“Ben,” he begins, “the things the man wanted to do weren’t good things. He would have treated you like less than a person, and that’s wrong. Nobody has that right.”

Confused green eyes watch him and Sam struggles for words. “There are good touches and bad touches.” Inside, Sam groans at the lameness of his explanation. 

Ben’s so grown in so many ways that it’s easy to forget he’s so young in this. “Someday, when you’re older, you’ll meet someone and you’ll have feelings for them, and they’ll have feelings for you and sex can be a really good thing between the two of you.” Even as he says the words, Sam hopes with all his heart that they’re true, that Ben will be capable of making a connection like that, but sometimes the distance the boy keeps from normal people worries him.

“This confuses everyone when they’re your age,” Sam puts in when Ben still seems so uncertain he doesn’t even know what to ask.

“Even my dad?”

Sam grins, remembering the day John bribed Sam with a sundae to go sit on the far picnic table while he sat and talked with Dean about girls and condoms. He’s sure it lost something in translation when Dean relayed the info to Sam later that night.

“Yeah dude, even your dad.”

Sam starts the car again and they talk more as he drives. The truth is he’d rather not go on about this, but Ben needs to know enough to protect himself if something happens to Sam. Together, they go through every type of touch that Sam knows Ben’s experienced and catalog the way they feel into: good-warm-safe (hugs from Sam), funny-annoying (when Bobby ruffles his hair), cold-not-good (the way the doctors at Manticore touched him). They decide together that Ben shouldn’t let doctors touch him again unless Sam says it’s okay or Ben’s injured.

“How will I know bad touches?” Ben asks, and Sam glances away from the road to see if he’s upset by all of this.

“If it makes you feel bad or dirty, it’s a bad touch. If someone says it’s a secret, it’s probably a bad touch. If it hurts you more than it makes you happy, no matter how old you are, it’s a bad touch.”

Ben stares ahead, but Sam can tell he’s thinking about it.

“You can always ask me,” Sam says, in a total after-school-special moment. “You can ask me anything and I won’t be mad at you and we’ll work it out together, okay?”

“Okay, Sam.”

Despite his brave front, Sam hopes it’s a long time before more serious questions come up.

 

2012

 

Sam leans back against a log near the campfire. The weather is about as perfect as he could hope for, nice enough that sleeping outdoors seems like a treat instead of a punishment from the universe. The Impala is a comforting bulk in the dark. Ben is nearby but not in sight; he’d disappeared into the night the second Sam gave him permission to go for a run.

The boy got antsy sometimes, despite the hard work of making it day to day, the challenge of the hunt and Sam assigning PT, making sure he was as strong and fast as he could possibly be, making sure he’d live when the world pushed too hard.

They had passed a derelict water tower about a mile down the road. It isn’t much of a “High Place,” but Sam doesn’t doubt that Ben’s up there. Sam has told him to keep away from those rickety old structures, but on the other hand, he respects Ben’s ability to keep out of trouble. If choosing faith over following orders is the worst teenage rebellion Sam sees, he’ll be grateful.

The soft-blowing wind carries the sound of a voice to Sam’s ears, an anguished cry that has Sam scrambling for the 2-way radio. 

“Ben, was that you? Report.” 

“I’m okay, Sam,” Ben replies after a torturous pause, his voice thick, his breath shaky, and Sam has no doubt it was Ben who had cried out.

“What’s happening?” Sam asks, managing the Walkie Talkie with one hand while he sorts through weapons with the other. Whatever’s hurt Ben, Sam’s gonna see it bleed.

There’s a crackle of static and Ben’s voice too soft on the other end. “She won’t talk to me. She won’t talk to me and there’s an empty place, Sam, and it hurts.”

Sam flips the safety back on the shotgun and lays it by the bedroll, because how do you fight the goddess in a kid’s head?

“Are you injured?” He asks, knowing Ben still has a hard time mentioning things like that without a direct question.

“No, Sam.”

“I want you back here,” Sam says, in his “that’s an order” voice. He does quick calculations in his head, figures thirty seconds for Ben to get off of the tower, then a mile cross-field run. “Five minutes, Ben. Go.”

He rakes his fingers through his hair while he waits. He hasn’t felt this helpless since the demon in his father’s skin had Dean pinned to the wall.

He still hasn’t figured out a course of action when Ben enters the circle of fire-light. His young face is streaked with tears. He looks broken and terrified and all Sam can do is open his arms, catch him when he crumbles, hold him and rock him as he cries great heart-sick sobs.

If it had been Before, and Ben was a normal kid, Sam could have gotten him help somehow, taken him to Pastor Jim’s, maybe found a drug or something to level him out. There’s no chance of that now though. Jim Murphy’s dead and Sam has no idea what weirdness Ben’s blood-work might turn up.

They are on their own.

Sam is used to the feeling.

A week later, they cross paths with a pack of vampires. There are five in all, two mated pairs and a pretty blonde woman, running a “Hotel California” up in Oregon. 

Sam and Ben check in at noon, and by 3PM the nest is a charnel house of blood and gore. Sam’s shoulder aches from swinging the machete and his left wrist bleeds from where one caught him with its teeth as he put it down.

The sound of a blade hacking into flesh rouses him from his exhausted stupor. He looks over to see Ben chopping the largest vamp’s face apart to get at the fangs. 

He knows it isn’t healthy. He knows it is just postponing the problem. He just can’t find it in himself to stop Ben from doing something that might bring him a little peace.

Sam doesn’t say a word until Ben carries the blonde’s head back to his makeshift butcher’s block. “Not that one,” he says before Ben can start working on it. 

Ben looks from Sam to the head and back again. “Okay, Sam.”

He still breaks her arm and poses the body. 

Sam waits in the car so he doesn’t have to hear the crunch.

2013

Ben likes the Impala, the song of her, so many parts working together--the strong chug chug chug of the pistons and valves, like a heart-beat at super-speed, the hum of the axle turning, the murmur of the water pump and the buzz of the fan-belt. He likes the way she smells, like Sam and guns. He can smell someone else too, in the sweat and the blood, and he imagines it’s Dean, the father-ghost Ben tries to be like. 

He likes to drive but he enjoys watching Sam drive more. Ben piles their bags of clothes and blankets up against the passenger-side door in the back and stretches out. There are lines on Sam’s face, sharp by his mouth, deep and heavy between his eyebrows, crinkly like crushed metal in the corners of his eyes. Ben wants to look like that, strong. He likes to watch Sam’s eyes, the way he looks ahead, always ready for trouble, or a last-minute detour. Sometimes, just for a second, Sam will look into the mirror at Ben, and Ben knows he belongs, knows he has a home and a purpose and that he’ll never be lost again.

He knows he’s not right. It took him a long time to figure out that Sam knows too, that Sam can see the empty places in him, where the need to hunt burns deep in his chest. Sam knows that Ben needs The Blue Lady, even if he doesn’t believe in her, and that’s enough. 

Sam helps him find a balance, helps him fit in with the normal people that are sometimes as scary as the Nomlies. 

Ben isn’t right, and Sam loves him anyway. Some days Ben looks at Sam and sees the places that are empty in him too, where Dean used to be, the places Ben tries to fill, and he thinks that it all works out fine. 

 

========


End file.
